Woman missing for 50 years discovered in northern Canada

A woman whom police once believed was murdered by her husband after she was last seen in September 1961 in westernmost Canada has been discovered living in the far north of the country in the Yukon region.

22.07.2013

(AFP) A woman whom police once believed was murdered by her husband after she was last seen in September 1961 in westernmost Canada has been discovered living in the far north of the country in the Yukon region.

And she has a new family, police said Friday.

Lucy Johnson, now 77, was last spotted by a neighbour in Surrey, British Columbia where she had been living. Police had investigated her husband, in part because he did not report her missing until four years later.

They excavated the family's back yard looking for clues, but uncovered nothing pointing to her fate, and the case went cold.

The husband, Marvin, died in the late 1990s.

Last month, Surrey police highlighted Lucy's disappearance hoping to generate new clues in a routine revisiting of missing persons cases, while her daughter Linda placed an ad in a British Columbia newspaper.

Shortly afterwards the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) received a call from a stepsister Linda didn't know she had, to say that their mother was now living in Yukon.

"The wheels were set in motion and it led to finding Lucy Johnson alive and well," RCMP Corporal Bert Paquet stated.

"We received a phone call from the stepdaughter in Yukon who claimed that she had seen the picture of a missing person in the newspaper and she said the missing person we were looking for was her mother," he said.

"It's a life-changing event," Paquet commented. "She's certainly got some explaining to do to her family."

Investigators are also looking into why Lucy picked up and left without a word.